Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2: Fully Optimized PVE Builds for Every Class

Shoot your gun, scan the heretics.
Weapon Choices

Bolt Rifle With Grenade Launcher
The main reason why this weapon is viable, – is a grenade launcher. It does more damage than a Melta, provides the same amount of insta-heal/stagger, and have bigger single-target damage. That said, its explosion’s AOE is way smaller than of a Melta shot. Bolt Rifle is just a bonus on top of your Grenade Launcher. It does some decent damage and can kill a Tyranid Warrior in ~10 headshots.
Perk Tree – Just get all of the ammo/ammo generation that you can get:

Plasma Incinerator
A weapon for elite killing and boss DPS. Also good at insta-healing by shooting in packs of nids and Auspex-marked targets. The best version is the Damage one, but the Venting Speed version can also see some play. Capable of killing Tyranid Warriors in three shots. This is, no means, the best weapon in the game, but it is a totally viable gun.
Perk Tree – Get all of the ammo and dip into a bit of damage since your proj speed is already good enough:

Melta
Completely overpowered. It’s so OP, you might fall asleep while cruising thru the game with it. Staggers all of the non-boss enemies in the game, insta-heals you in any scary situation, destroys all of the gaunts in a single click, and is totally capable of destroying all of the currently presented elite enemies. You will be using it A LOT, so you might as well take the Ammo version of it, but Damage version is also a decent pick.
Perk Tree – Top row for the DPS increase and some free ammo generation:

Bolt Pistol
It’s borderline useless, but you don’t have much of a choice. Can deal with the hordes of smaller nids, can deal with some elites if you are out of ammo, but… You don’t really need any of it on Tactical. The main use for it is to clear the hordes while using a Plasma as your main weapon. Just pick the Damage version for some Gun-Strike damage.
Perk Tree – Ammo, Damage, Buffs:

Chainsword
Again, you don’t have much of a choice, nor much of a use for it. Just pick the Fencing version of it and use it as your parry stat-stick. Use it when you can save some ammo by using it and feel safe about going melee.
Perk Tree – it’s VERY bad and there is nothing you can do about it:

Honorable Mentions

Stalker Bolt Rifle
An elite-killing weapon. You can’t do anything else with this weapon, but when it comes to killing elites, it’s not so bad. About 6 headshots to kill a Tyranid Warrior. Both Ammo and Damage versions will do fine.

Bolt Carbine – Marksman Version
A slightly better Bolt Rifle that has not Grenade Launcher. Use it only if you REALLY want to use a standard Bolt Rifle and refusing to use the Grenade Launcher one. About 9 headshots to kill a Tyranid Warrior. Damage Version only.

Class Perks
There is only one viable setup of perks, with the first column of perks being the weapon specific one. But ultimately, Balanced Distribution is almost always better than any other weapon related perk. In second column, middle perk is also a viable option. Third column perks are based on if you are using a Plasma or not. If you are using it, pick the bottom one. If not, the top one.

Initiate with your Jump Pack and kill hordes with it, do lots of Gun-Strikes.

Weapon Choices

Heavy Bolt Pistol
The ultimate Gun-Strike machine. Also good at dealing with the elites. Not much to say about it, just a solid pistol. Use the Damage variant for even more Gun-Strike damage, so you could borderline one-shot most of the elites.
Perk Tree – Take all of the damage you can get:

Chainsword
Well, you have to use the Fencing one, just for the Parries. But when it comes to the actually using it as a melee weapon, uhh… If you are good in melee combat, you probably don’t need this guide. This is not THE worst melee weapon, but using it requires some skill.
Perk Tree – Just take whatever is useful. You are basically forced to take the full throttle, and even tho you can use it sometimes to deal some BIG damage to enemies, and especially Carniflex… This is not a very “safe” way to deal with your enemies:

Thunder Hammer
Heavy attacks are too risky and won’t reward you enough for your risks. Don’t use them. if you want to use some big damage heavy attack, use full throttle on your Chainsword. Light attack spam, on the other hand, is quite good with the Thunder Hammer, since the stagger values and AOE are quite high.
Perk Tree – Just more damage for the god of damage:

Power Fist
Don’t. Just don’t… The damage is low, the attack speed is slow, the charged attacks are notoriously bad. The cannon punch is good, but it’s either bugged, or doesn’t deal any damage, so 50% increase is literally nothing. You can use it as a fencing stat-stick, but that’s about it. I can’t even provide a decent Perk Tree for it, since it’s just bad, no matter how you build it.
It looks cool tho.

Class Perks
You are a Gun-Strike spammer. The rest of the ideas behind the perk tree are dead ends. Bottom perks in a 2nd, 5th, and 7th columns are also viable options, but that’s it.

Dishonorable Mentions

Bolt Pistol
Today I will use a normal Bolt Pistol, even tho I have a Heavy one. Surely my teammates won’t think that I have some severe mental issues.

Be… A Melta bot?…

Weapon… Choices?…

Melta
Completely overpowered. It’s so OP, you might fall asleep while cruising thru the game with it. Staggers all of the non-boss enemies in the game, insta-heals you in any scary situation, destroys all of the gaunts in a single click, and is totally capable of destroying all of the currently presented elite enemies. You will be using it A LOT, so you might as well take the Ammo version of it, but Damage version is also a decent pick.
Perk Tree – Top row for the DPS increase and some free ammo generation:

Bolt Pistol
It’s borderline useless, but you don’t have much of a choice. Can deal with the hordes of smaller nids, can deal with some elites if you are out of ammo, but… You don’t really need any of it on Tactical. The main use for it is to clear the hordes while using a Plasma as your main weapon. Just pick the Damage version for some Gun-Strike damage.
Perk Tree – Ammo, Damage, Buffs:

Chainsword
Again, you don’t have much of a choice, nor much of a use for it. Just pick the Fencing version of it and use it as your parry stat-stick. Use it when you can save some ammo by using it and/or when feel safe about going melee. You do have some melee perks, so it is more viable in melee than it is on your Tactical or even Assault.
Perk Tree – it’s VERY bad and there is nothing you can do about it:

Combat Knife
A fencing Stat-Stick with some rushing capabilities. You can go into melee with it, and if you’re good at melee combat you’ll have some success, but the main reason to pick it, – is its shoulder charge attack. Heavy combos are pretty bad tho.
Perk Tree – Rush for the Shoulder Bash and take some damage on the road:

Class Perks
Most of your perks are straight up useless. First three columns will provide you with a lot of parrying and dodging capabilities, which is very good, but your Gun-Strike damage is bad, so having a Gun-Strike aura Assault in your team is borderline mandatory. The CDR aura is good. The rest of your tree is hot garbage, and it makes you finisher-hungry, which is a very bad thing. Tbh, you can literally ignore the second part of your tree.

Accept the gift of immortality. ..And the only viable and fun melee weapon in the game

Weapon choices

Plasma Pistol
Good tool to kill some of the ranged elites. Good weapon to do some Gun-Strikes. Decent ammo capacity if you’ll choose the ammo version of it. Just a very good weapon overall. Both Ammo and Damage versions will work just fine.
Perk Tree – Bottom row for the ammo and charged shot ammo efficiency:

Power Sword

The only fun melee in the game. Power Rake is a powerhouse of stagger and damage. Still worse at killing elites than meta ranged weapons, but at the very least it CAN kill ranged elites AND stagger them at the same time. Also, its left click spam is a perfect way to clear hordes of nids. thanks tot he contested health perk.
Perk Tree – Bottom row. Even thinking about the top row is heresy:

Class Perks
Bulwark’s perks are very good. I’d even say, they are the best perks in the game. You can go your usual tanky build, or you can go for a build that relies on the Shock Fields. Both of them are good.
For the shock build, take the middle perk in the 2nd column, and top perk in the 3rd column, also top or bottom perk in the final column.
How to use your ulti: get a few enemies into the finisher range, place your banner, get full HP for you and your teammates by finishing off your enemies.
How to play against chaos: don’t play operations with chaos on them (same goes for the rest of the classes, chaos is ♥♥♥♥♥ boring and annoying)
Why Intimidation Aura? Because it’s better than the Gun-Strikes. If Gun-Strikes had invul frames, aura would be useless, but for now, it’s the best option.

You ARE a walking Las-Fusil. Deal with it.

Weapon Choices

Las-Fusil
An absolute beast of a weapon, no potions are too strong for it. Elites? Dead. Bosses? Dead. Hordes? Believe it or not, also dead.
Perk Tree – You don’t even need the headshot perks! Just take some free ammo and AOE and go for the top row’s last perk, so you could safely insta-heal with it like it’s some kind of Meltagun:

Bolt Pistol
Even tho you can easily clear hordes with your Las-Fusil, you’ll gladly take some more horde-clearing options.
Perk Tree:

Combat Knife
A fencing Stat-Stick with some rushing capabilities. You can go into melee with it, and if you’re good at melee combat you’ll have some success, but the main reason to pick it, – is its shoulder charge attack. Heavy combos are pretty bad tho.
Perk Tree – Rush for the Shoulder Bash and take some damage on the road:

Class Perks
There is only one viable option and the rest of the tree variations are obsolete in comparison.
So, how do you play with it? Go into the invis, shoot something in the head a few times, kill that something with a headshot, repeat. You have about 90% invis up-time. Do I even need to tell you how OP this ♥♥♥♥ is? The only one even more OP class is, most likely, Tactical. But looking at how OP Sniper is, it’s debatable if Tactical is better or not.

Ranged DPS powerhouse

Weapon Choices

Heavy Bolter
Embrace the turret playstyle! Until you’ll get knocked back because one of your weapon perks, for some reason, does not provide you with the knock back resist. Seriously, you have enough DPS to smash left click and never let it go, you’ll OUTHEAL your enemies. Just stand in one place and destroy everyone. But this stupid perk and an insanely fast overheating, just straight up ruin all the fun! Why, Sabers? WHY?
Versions wise… You need the damage for more DPS, accuracy because of the dumb console-favored spread system, and venting speed cuz overheating. So, what do you choose? Idk. You need everything. But since the knock back perk is nonexistent, and overheating/spread will be too strong anyway, just take damage so you could deal with your problems by killing things faster.
Perk Tree – You still have to use heavy hits immunity perk, there is no other choice:

Heavy Plasma Incinerator
It’s a good weapon, With the bottom row of perks, it’s just a heavy version of a normal plasma. Instead of three hits per Tyranid Warrior, you only need 2. You can only do 2 shots before overheating, sure, but your shots are AOE, so… Just take the firerate version of the weapon to counter the long charge-up timer, and destroy the elites. You can even insta-heal off the hordes with it, just ♥♥♥♥ with the normal plasma. And the perks from your Plasma Pistol will increase its ammo capacity, which is also pretty rad.
Perk Tree – Just go for the bottom row, you don’t need more damage:

Multi-Melta
This ♥♥♥♥ is more unfair than your life.
Go for the firerate version.
Perk Tree – Just go for the top row:

Plasma Pistol
Good tool to kill some of the ranged elites. Good weapon to do some Gun-Strikes. Decent ammo capacity if you’ll choose the ammo version of it. Just a very good weapon overall. Both Ammo and Damage versions will work just fine. Ammo from the tree gives you ammo for your main plasma weapon.
Perk Tree – Bottom row for the ammo and charged shot ammo efficiency:

Class Perks
Wanna make Multi-Melta feel even more unfair? Go for the middle perk in the first column. Bottom perk in the 2nd column if you’re using Heavy Bolter. Iron halo perks are debatable. You don’t really need any of them, but you can get some benefits from using any of them. It’s weird, just pick whatever you like.